In general, a wire harness is an electric wiring system containing a number of cables, often as many as 400-500 circuits. When producing such large scale wire harnesses, a plurality of unit cable binding assemblies (called temporary binding circuits) is first manufactured. These are then electrically connected by various means by what is called a final binding process. As the last step in the binding process, a plurality of terminals must be permanently and accurately inserted into a unit structure.
These structures have a main casing within which the contacts are arranged for connection to the terminals of the wire harness. An open component is preferably molded to the main casing and permits the terminals to mate with the contacts. Such structures are described in, for example, "Electronic Device Housing for Vehicles" (Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model 61-134455), "Joint Box" (Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model 61-96717), "Wire Connector" (Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model 60-2331), and "Connector-Equipped Electronic Device" (Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model 63-128778). In the past, when connecting a wire harness to such a unit structure, a female or male connector was integrally molded to the unit structure, and a complementary connector was integrally molded to the wire harness, and the two connectors were then mated to connect the harness to the unit structure. With this method, however, since it is necessary to mold the connectors to both the unit structure and the wire harness, the number of components, as well as the production cost, is increased.
To solve this problem, a method has been proposed (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 62-16009) in which a connector housing, into which the terminals are directly inserted after attachment to the cables, is integrally provided adjacent the connection to the unit structure, and the terminals are inserted therein. Since the terminals are inserted directly into the connector housing, a latch is integrally molded in the housing to prevent the terminals from detaching. However, the integral molding is a difficult and expensive operation.
Moreover, connecting the wire housing to the unit structure has not yet been automated. For this reason, the worker must manually insert the terminals into the connector housing. Since the arrangement of the terminals is not specified, the worker must at this time check the contacts in the housing into which each terminal is to be inserted, thus creating a situation in which connection errors are likely.